Reading is one of the most important skills that a student can acquire. For elementary school teachers, helping students become proficient readers is one of the greatest impacts they can make in a studentâs academic career. It is essential that students receive reading strategies in the classroom that have strong research support. Instructional strategies that have been shown to improve reading fluency include: repeated reading, listening passage preview, and phrase drill. Through the use of such evidence-based, procedurally standardized intervention strategies, teachers may be able to make meaningful contributions to improve studentsâ reading fluency. This study was conducted in an effort to bridge research to practice by offering an example of effectiveness (versus efficacy) research on a multi-component, evidence-based reading fluency intervention referred the Helping Early Literacy with Practice Strategies (HELPS) Program. The primary purpose of the study was to evaluate the effectiveness of the HELPS Program with low-performing second grade students when implemented by four classroom teachers and teacher assistants in a minimally controlled setting. Results from the study suggested that 29 students who received HELPS significantly improved (from pre-test to post-test) on the measure of basic reading competence when compared to a control group of 30 students, with low-performing students who received HELPS making significantly larger reading gains than students who did not receive the program. In addition, the study demonstrated that such outcomes are achievable when teachers and teacher assistants implement the program. Given these findings, HELPS appears to be a useful and practical tool for educatorsâ use in elementary school settings.

Gogel & McNulty (1983) demonstrated that the greater the density of vertical reference or hatch marks in a display, the greater the perceived velocity of a laterally moving object. Their study corroborates the findings of other researchers that the addition of reference-marks or a reference frame lowers the motion threshold (Liebowitz, 1955; Brown, 1931a, 1931b). The current studyâs first experiment successfully replicated the results of Gogel & McNultyâs study using a flat panel LCD screen and a predicted-motion task. Subsequent experiments examined the effect of object and reference-mark characteristics on accuracy. In general, accuracy increased as the extrapolation distance (ED) and reference-mark density increased. There was a consistent interactive effect between ED and reference-mark density such that medium and long EDs coupled with high density of reference-marks produced the greatest increase in accuracy. There was an interactive sex effect with ED which was present in the results, but was not consistent. Though accuracy was not affected by object size, horizontal extent, shape, familiarity, color or offset, the effect of high reference-mark density on improving accuracy disappeared when marks were less salient. The results of these experiments have application to the design of displays used for military, air traffic control and cockpit applications, laparoscopic surgery, assembly-line manufacturing, highway-construction tasks, and on-orbit space manufacturing and construction.

Meta-analysis has become a foundation of scientific inquiry. It is used to statistically integrate the findings of many studies to come to generalizable conclusions. Unfortunately, in some cases, the number of studies available for the analysis can make the meta-analysis process extremely difficult and lengthy. The current study attempted to alleviate this problem by investigating the effects of random sampling of the studies used in the analysis in recently published meta-analyses to determine if a subsample of studies could produce accurate results. In the process, the characteristics of recent meta-analyses were investigated, as well as the percentage of randomly sampled studies that is needed to produce accurate moderator findings. Results of this investigation provide preliminary support for the use of random sampling in medium and large-scale meta-analyses, or analyses in which a medium (35 or more) to large number (91 or more) of studies fit the analystâs inclusion criteria. Random sampling was able to reproduce the main effect sizes found in these types of meta-analyses. The use of random sampling to replicate the results of meta-analyses involving moderators, however, was only successful in large scale analyses. It is hoped that these results will encourage the use of random sampling in future meta-analyses by providing guidelines for its use, as this procedure can drastically reduce the amount of work required.

Investigations historically have been designed to identify the ways in which abused children differ from their nonabused peers. Although those studies have been instrumental in increasing the understanding of typical sequela of child abuse, past research has not informed us about differences that might exist within groups of abused children. The purpose of the current study was to examine individual differences in social adjustment among physically abused children using cluster analysis, a strategy based on a person-oriented approach to understanding individual differences. Participants were 98 children and their parents. All of the children had a substantiated history of physical abuse. Children?s problem solving skills and intent attributions were evaluated using hypothetical vignettes. In addition, parents and children participated in a 30-minute play session that was videotaped for later coding of parent behavior. Approximately six months after the clinic assessment, each child was observed during unstructured play and teachers completed the Social Behavior Scale (SBS) to describe the child?s adjustment. Cluster analyses were conducted on seven variables derived from the sample of playground behavior and the SBS. Using a number of criteria, support was found to extract three clusters. The ?Social Difficulties? cluster was comprised of children who received the highest ratings for social maladjustment and the lowest for prosocial behavior. The ?Socially Well Adjusted? subgroup was compromised of children who received the highest teacher ratings for prosocial behavior and the lowest for social maladjustment. Children comprising the ?At Risk? cluster were moderately well adjusted in social behavior; their scores were between those of the other clusters. A secondary purpose of the proposed research was to examine whether intellectual functioning, attributions of intent, social problem solving skills, and/or parental warmth predicted cluster membership. Only hostile attributions of intent was found to be a significant predictor of cluster membership. Findings support our assertion that there are clinically-relevant subgroups among children who have experienced abuse. Although these findings should be considered preliminary pending replication, they do point to the potential utility of examining individual differences in functioning among samples of abused children.

Although it is widely accepted that individual behavior is determined by person and situation characteristics, much research in the domain of job performance focuses more on person variables, while focusing less on the role of the work context. This study shows that elements of the work context (i.e., job/task characteristics, resources, and social relationships) explain variance in self ratings of task performance, organizational citizenship behavior, and counterproductive work behavior above and beyond what can be explained by two individual difference predictors (i.e., general cognitive ability and conscientiousness). This study highlights the importance of considering both individual differences and elements of the work context as determinants of job performance.

One of the proposed causes of childhood amnesia, the relative paucity of adults? memories for events occurring before the age of four, is the inability to verbally access preverbal memories. Although recent findings by Simcock and Hayne (2002) are consistent with this possibility, other researchers (Peterson & Rideout, 1998; Bauer, Wenner, & Kroupina, 2002) report some verbal access to memories acquired before the onset of productive language. The present research used the paradigm of color naming to further examine whether 2-year-old children can use newly acquired words to describe their preverbal memories. The method extended previous work by directly examining the acquisition of verbal labels and providing contextual support for memory performance. Participants learned a task requiring selecting a specific color. Those without color labels were taught them through eight structured sessions of age-appropriate color learning activities. After two months, the children's memory for the event was assessed verbally, then with visual cues, and finally through re-enactment. There were no group differences in implicit memory for the event (Fisher's Exact Test, p=0.31); children who knew the target label at encoding (n=20, mean age at recall 31.2 months), who acquired the label only after the intervention (n=8, M = 31.3 months), and who lacked the label at both pretest and posttest (n=9, M= 29.1 months) performed comparably in the re-enactment condition. Although 12 of 20 children who knew their target color word at the time of encoding could verbally access the memory at the time of recall, only one of 8 children who did not know their target word at encoding but learned it before recall could access the verbal label. However, this child incorrectly re-enacted the event. This research suggests that children cannot independently translate preverbal memories into words even with extensive task support. Therefore, language acquisition may indeed play an important role in the offset of childhood amnesia.

The current study examined the relationship between supervisor and subordinate performance, explored the impact of supervisor performance on subordinate performance and performance change over time, and investigated whether supervisor performance has a stronger impact on subordinate performance over time than initial subordinate performance has on supervisor performance over time. This study utilized a longitudinal, quasi-experimental design with multiple sources of measurement. Multisource managerial performance ratings from 2001 to 2003 were obtained from a large multinational technology firm. Subordinates and their bosses? performance ratings from different sources were investigated by correlational and multiple regression analyses. Separate analyses were conducted on a subset of the subordinates who experienced a change in supervisor between years one (2001) and two (2002) and another subset who did not experience change in supervisor over the three year study. The correlational and predictive analyses revealed that supervisor performance and change in supervisor performance did not relate to or predict the performance or performance change of subordinates at the middle management level. Change in supervisor performance, specifically when a supervisor is replaced by another supervisor with a different level of performance, did not predict change in subordinate performance concurrently or over time. Finally, neither initial supervisor performance nor initial subordinate performance differentially predicted later subordinate or supervisor performance over time.

This study examines the effect of mentoring on five doctoral student outcomes: satisfaction with advisor, intellectual property events, publications, presentations, and degree progress. Psychosocial support, citizenship, discipline, and identity were examined as four moderator variables. Doctoral students who began their program between August, 2000 and January, 2003, provided information about mentoring from their advisor and other individuals, satisfaction with their advisor, doctoral productivity, and degree progress. Two mentoring factors, career and psychosocial support, significantly interact and predict satisfaction with advisor. At high levels of career or psychosocial support, this interaction has the most effect. Discipline was a significant moderator of career and psychosocial support on number of publications. Citizenship and identity were not significant moderators of mentoring and the five dependent variables. Number of semesters of undergraduate research was significantly related to satisfaction with advisor, intellectual property events, presentations, and degree progress. Most individuals reported having a network of mentors.

Synthetic speech is a technology that can be utilized to convey information and aid people in their tasks. Older adults in particular are a population that may be able to benefit from synthetic speech, and they are a population that has been investigated in a limited capacity. The current researchers intended to elucidate lingering conflicts in previous research on the intelligibility and recall of word and stories in synthetic speech for older and younger adults and how that compared to similar conditions in natural speech. Twenty-four older and 24 younger adults completed intelligibility and recall tasks with word lists and stories. Results indicated that older adults had a more difficult time with all speech, natural speech was easier to understand and remember than synthetic speech, and stories were easier to recall than words. Results also indicated that older adults had a more difficult time understanding synthetic words as compared to natural words than younger adults. In addition, older adults improved differentially with the recall of stories as opposed to words when compared to the younger adult group. Potential directions for synthetic speech software design and future research are discussed.

Preschool children are capable of displaying strategies in memory tasks and demonstrating an early understanding of memorization (e. g., Wellman, 1988; Baker-Ward, Ornstein, & Holden, 1984). Questions remain, however, about the origins of strategic behavior in early childhood. A great deal of recent attention has been devoted to the interrelations among working memory and measures of executive functioning/inhibitory control in elementary-school children (e.g., Schneider, Schumann-Hengsteler, & Sodian, 2005). The goal of this investigation was to extend this work to preschool children in order to examine possible influences on the emergence of deliberate remembering. Specifically, interrelations among working memory, inhibitory control, and deliberate task approaches were examined in 168 three-year-olds who participated in a large-scale, broadly-focused investigation of development, the Durham Child Health and Development Study. Although predicted relations among multiple domains of cognitive functioning were not observed, important findings did emerge. Previous results examining the use of deliberate task approaches were replicated in a more diverse and younger sample. Support for the presence of deliberate remembering in young preschoolers was found in a significant positive relation between language ability and the extent of deliberate task approaches. Finally, an unexpected relation between deliberate task approaches and subsequent recall performance was found; this result is discussed in relation to Utilization Deficiency. Implications for understanding some of the contributors to the emergence of deliberate remembering are presented, and directions for future research are discussed.